Preserved Wook is an oldtime New England railway engineman who calls to life again the history & technology not only of the steam locomotive in the LAST Steam Age of the Old Atlantic West, but of many a wonderful way of getting around in the World, in a better time when travel indeed was for the few…and the very few!

Engineman Preserved Wook Spots The Problem

Engineman Wook is on a trainman’s holiday from the PRR. Now he finds himself standing off on the far side of the UP locomotive to “get away from conductors, brakemen and other halfwits so a man can THINK!” and studying the problem

“By God, boys, I believe the little bastards have been and poured Wildroot * all over the rail!”

The engine shown, the first of the 1920s Union Pacific RR 9000 3-cylinder series, had twelve drivers, the most ever mounted under one cylinder-array on any American steam locomotive, and the 9000s all churned out some pretty big numbers!

Builder: ALCO

Fuel: 21 tons

Water: 15,000 Gal

Steam Pressure: 220 lbs

Cylinders: (outboard dual @) 27 x 32″ (center single) 27 x31″

Dia. Drivers: 67″

Tractive Effort: 96,650 lbs

Weight: 782,000 lbs

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* — a popular lanolin-based hair oil of the 1950s; in Minnehaha Elementary in South Minneapolis, in a first inkling of the sexual coma, in the 4th grade us little boys all inundated ourselves with our dads’ and all “got on the shit list” at home.